Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Kenny’s head was partially underwater and the rest of her body mid flip-turn when she heard wind chimes ringing from her phone indicating the forty-five-minute workout was over.
Today was the first day since she started swimming that she was still powering through the water when her alarm went off.
It was also the first time in fifteen years that she bookended her laps with the half-somersault tumble to change directions.
She waded to the side of the pool where her phone and Swell bottle lay on a towel. She dried off her hands, took a long swig of water, and picked up the device to swipe off the alarm.
Kenny hadn’t gone nearly two weeks without a reliable internet connection since her eleventh birthday when her parents surprised her with an AOL TV keyboard that hooked up to the box television set in the family room.
What surprised her most about the past twelve days without the luxury was that she barely missed it at all.
Text to Hailey: Great! Do I need to be at the villa?
Text from Hailey: Nope!
Kenny was relieved. The temperatures were expected to hover in the low nineties complimented by a sky filled with sunshine, so she planned to spend the afternoon on the beach.
She hadn’t slept much the night before and was looking forward to taking a long nap on the sand.
The insomnia was a combination of trying to squash the new crush jitters that intensified with each unintentional run-in with J.P.
—which further intensified with the pool boy’s delivery of Miss Luana’s key lime pie cookies—and Muffin Evans’s proposition that she author a light-hearted, romance novel.
Kenny knew she was equipped to handle the consuming and dizzying heart-skips-a-beat, head-in-the-clouds, can’t-stop-smiling phenomenon that overcame her when she saw or thought about J.P.
The solution was simple. Ignore it. Ignore him.
Ignore the feelings. She was fluent in ignoring the impractical.
The brief hiatus of life would quickly culminate and any further meetings with Bike Boy and his dog would end just as abruptly as they started.
The same wasn’t true for Muffin Evans. The Manuscript Eater would always be a reality in Kenny’s life if she maintained any aspiration of becoming a published author.
Kenny knew nothing about writing women’s fiction, nor did she care to learn, but thought it might behoove her to entertain the suggestion.
Colby casually reminded Kenny during their make-up phone call that Mary Kay Andrews was a serious journalist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution before writing thirty feel-good bestsellers.
Ina Garten worked in nuclear energy policy and budgeting for the Carter and Ford administrations prior to authoring over a dozen cookbooks.
Kenny appreciated these women’s career pivots; although she was certain they did so on their own accord and not because some egotistical book dictator predetermined their fate and contributions to the literary world.
Kenny hung her damp towel over the side of the back patio wall and poured herself another cup of coffee while she debated whether she should shower before heading to the beach to bake in the South Carolina sun for the rest of the day.
She pulled out the ingredients to assemble a yogurt parfait for breakfast with the granola and fruit she got at the farmers market, but then reached for the bag of key lime pie cookies instead of a mixing bowl.
The indulgence didn’t exactly meet the early morning nutritional requirements Kenny tried to consume but the sooner she got rid of the cookies, the easier it would be to forget that J.P.
sent them. She’d shove the handwritten note somewhere in her overstuffed planner and maybe stumble across it in five years when she decided to house clean drawers.
Problem solved.
To avoid the possible embarrassment of being called out by a stranger she may encounter on the beach for another potential bout of irritated eye syndrome, Kenny showered off the sweat and chlorine from her morning swim.
She went a step further and broke out a new razor to shave her legs for her solo Friday afternoon outing.
As she lathered her legs with lavender-scented foam, she was briefly thrown back to the idyllic Gillette Venus commercials.
The silky-smooth calves of long-legged women flashing one succinct knee pop after another across the television screen like the Radio City Rockettes laying across color coordinated beach towels on milky white sands against a cloudless button blue sky.
If one close shave could have those women feeling, looking, and thinking like goddesses, maybe it could work for her, too.
Text to Hailey: Great! Then I’m heading to beach (Emoji: smiley face with sunglasses)
Text from Hailey: Jelly! (Emoji: pink bikini) (Emoji: palm tree)